Hunt is Revolutionary idea

Cached beneath slippery, seaweed-covered rocks in Boston Harbor, with a 10-foot tide quickly encroaching on our hide and a bitter 25-knot wind chilling us to the bone, we tossed a commemorative tea bag into the salt and set strings of decoys.

Cached beneath slippery, seaweed-covered rocks in Boston Harbor, with a 10-foot tide quickly encroaching on our hide and a bitter 25-knot wind chilling us to the bone, we tossed a commemorative tea bag into the salt and set strings of decoys.

Our version of the American Revolution was re-enacted last week, but instead of demonstrating our distain of the British as indignant colonists did during the Boston Tea Party of Dec. 16, 1773, we focused our sights on sea ducks - Old Squaw, American eider and scoters - and black brant that traditionally winter on the 30-mile-long bay as they have over the ages.

In the pre-dawn, with the city skyline and bridges illuminated in the distance, not far from where the U.S. Constitution is moored, we pursued our quarry on tidal lands that rim the Boston Harbor Islands, a National Park Service Area. We were perfectly within our rights to do so.

What foresight the colonists had, protecting the public's right to hunt, fish and boat on intertidal flats, answering a question that dogs us today, especially on the West Coast. Who owns the sea and the shore?

Imagine, more than 370 years ago, the right to enter private property up to mean high tide was accomplished by the Colonial Ordinances of 1641-47, which specifically reserved for the public the right to use tidelands for three purposes - fishing, fowling and navigation.

Our group included three Italian bird collectors from Malta, Stockton native Dr. Taylor Thompson and his son, Warren, and Adam Smith, who has guided and operated trawlers off the New England coast for more than 40 years. Our challenge was to take unique specimens that aren't found in other parts of the world.

"This is urban hunting," said Thompson, who is head of Thoracic Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School. "We're so close to approximately 4 million people, freeways and buildings, yet we have the right to hunt."

What if the same rights were granted in San Francisco Bay and Tomales Bay, and not squelched by local city and county ordinances, or the National Park Service? Somehow, the ethics and sensibilities of the colonists so long ago didn't pioneer west.

As the sun finally shined through the dense overcast - at 27 degrees at least it wasn't snowing - formations of eiders, massive mollusk eating birds that weigh about 6 pounds, broke through the mist, flying swiftly and directly between the waves along indentations of the shoreline. Winter shows no terror for an eider, which originates from Hudson Bay and Labrador.

The large duck produces the down used by the European world for pillows and garments and skins used by natives for clothes and blankets. For our purposes, the showy drake, with its iridescent black crown and sea green and white head, would be destined for the taxidermist.

The next select targets were Old Squaw, a species some politically correct folks insist on calling a "long-tailed duck."

"This noisy wintery duck gabs and calls continuously," Smith said. "We'll hear them before we see them when we float into them."

He positioned our flat-bottomed boat upwind of the chubby, white birds accented with a unique eight-inch long black tail and pinkish-orange bill. As we came into range the Old Squaw rose quickly and flew low to the water, in irregular formations, with an amazing series of acrobatic twists and turns, showing breasts and backs alternately.

Their flight is so swift and erratic when buffeted by the wind, they were very difficult to shoot.

In hand, the Old Squaw was perhaps the finest duck I have ever had to privilege to take in more than 50 years of hunting. No wonder collectors from around the globe come here.

Mission completed, with two prized birds taken during 11 hours on the harbor, the cross- country flight to be with friends and experience an urban hunt was beyond compare.

Then it was time for a wild-game dinner, a walk along the Freedom Trail, a visit to the Museum of Fine Art and a holiday concert by the Boston Pops, all in three days.